For most computer users, copy & paste is as natural a process as anything else. On mobile platforms though, it hasn’t exactly been a staple. It took a couple of years for the iPhone to get the feature running and the recently released Windows Phone 7 platform is rumored to be getting it soon. Android, luckily for us users, has had copy & paste all the time, and as with every other Android function, application developers haven’t shied away from enhancing it further.(more…)

Have you ever been driving, and needed to use your phone in any way? Maybe you need to make a call, send a text message, use navigation to find the place you are going to… Using your phone when driving is dangerous. But now, thanks to the Vlingo Corporation, you can do all of these things, without touching your phone!

When you live outside the confines of a major city, one of the downsides is that you never seem to be able to get weather forecasts specifically for your town and have to resort to seeing the forecasts of the nearest enlisted location. These forecasts often end up being quite accurate, but physical proximity doesn’t imply that both locations are on the same altitude. When that is the case, more often than not, the other city’s weather is very different from your town’s, and any weather application is essentially useless to you.

That’s where Weather Widgets from Pixelspore comes into play, by using yr.no, one of the most extensive location databases I have seen in a weather application, and adding a wide collection of widget designs to top it off.

One of strong suits of Android is its openness. Unlike iOS, developers can just go for it and create apps that mimic or duplicate the functionality of the core operating system or apps. In other words, you can have as many browsers (full featured with their own rendering engines), media players, home screens and so forth.

It wouldn’t be incorrect to say that portable media players have transformed into smart phones and not the other way round. It is fair enough to search for new media players that push the envelope and make music on the go so much fun. PowerAMP is a great example — let’s check out how it fares. (more…)

Cameras have been standard features on phones for a few years now, and the trend has only continued with every new smartphone taking the megapixel war to the next level. Although mobile phone cameras have traditionally been frowned upon by purists — 8 to 12 megapixel sensors and top-of-the-line lenses notwithstanding — for most, these have become their primary source of capturing everyday moments.

It is a shame then, that as the world’s largest and fastest growing smartphone OS, android does not come with a camera application that lives up to its reputation. The stock app that gets packaged with android phones is at best rudimentary, and meant to simply get the job done. Luckily for us users though, there are a ton of apps that chip in to add bits and pieces of functionality. Camera360 is an application that attempts a jack-of-all-trades approach here, and does so quite successfully.(more…)

Introduction

While Android moves closer and closer to world domination, there is still one very important place it’s lacking: syncing to your computer. There is a void that needs to be filled here by Google, because at the moment Android phones come with no desktop software to do things like sync your calendar, address book, music, and photos (aside from syncing to your Google account). SyncMate, an Android app with accompanying Mac desktop software, hopes to fill that void for OS X users.

An Introduction

Metro UI is a new and alluring Home Screen for Android. It’s been in development for approximately two months by Joe Chrisman, who took to the Windows Phone 7 interface when he saw it used on the TV adverts. Somewhat smitten, he looked into the Android Market to see if a clone of the interface had already been made for Android. Though he found one, Joe was disappointed by the poor speed and behaviour the application gave him. Determined to give his phone the Metro-Effect, he sat down and started coding his own version: Metro UI.

Metro UI’s current purpose is to serve as a clone of the Metro-style interface Windows Phone 7 boasts. I suppose there are no practical advantages to using it other than to have a taster of the WP7 interface, and to have a neat-transitioning fast Home Screen, both of which are rare!

One of the shortcomings of Android is its media player. Sure, it’s adequate — but it is clearly lacking, compared to the iOS media player. Now that people use smartphones for all kinds of purposes, including listening to music, the absence of a mindblowing media player is such a tragedy. Winamp for Android could be the missing piece in the puzzle.

The legendary media player from the desktop is now available for Android powered mobile devices. Read on to know how awesome it turns out to be.

We are now three weeks into 2011 and there is one thing most of us have in common: the fading of our New Year’s resolutions. Many, including myself, pledged to either “be healthier” or “get in shape” this year. Luckily, RunKeeper knows we may need some help keeping our resolutions and is here to lend a hand.

Ever since the word ‘data’ was first mumbled somewhere in a lab way back when calculators were the size of your average gymnasium, the words ‘back up’ have never been too far behind.

That’s because when data gets lost, stolen, corrupted or a hard drive simply decides life isn’t worth it anymore, valuable files can be lost if they’re not stored elsewhere. Imagine if a business only kept their accounts on a single laptop. It’d be a bad day at the office if said laptop were to go missing.

So we back up religiously to avoid such disasters and today we have a review of a cool Android app that helps you do just that. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, SpiderOak.